


JAOA: Tumbling Down

by BlackRose (darthneko)



Series: JAOA [27]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-12-24
Updated: 2001-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-25 21:31:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/BlackRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the mouths of children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	JAOA: Tumbling Down

**JAOA: Tumbling Down  
Year of the Republic 25,007**

* * *

There was a particular set to a rebellious child's expression that could out stubborn ninety percent of the Senate, Obi-Wan reflected ruefully, and between the out-thrust line of her chin and lower lip and the sulky glare in her dark eyes Leia had the expression down to an art.

"Don't want to," she said clearly, her small elbows planted solidly on the table top.

Or maybe, Obi-Wan thought, it was only Skywalker children. He hadn't taken a turn teaching in the creche often enough to know if it was something particular to the breed or not.

"It isn't a question of 'wanting' to," he told her patiently. "Your lessons need to be done."

Leia pushed her lower lip out another fraction and shook her head, vigorously enough to set the heavy braided plait of her dark hair bouncing across her shoulders. It was a look that had probably struck real fear into the hearts of her Naboo tutors.

Obi-Wan wasn't about to have any of it and stared right back over the top of his report, expression unflinching.

"Da wouldn't," Leia declared, attempting a new tactic. She pushed the child sized data pad with it's oversized rounded keys as far away as her arms could reach across the table.

"Yes, your father *did*," Obi-Wan contradicted, "when he was your age." A small distortion of the truth, as Anakin had more likely been learning the rudiments of domestic labor in a Hutt household at Leia's age than the finer details of basic mathematical addition. A small tweak of the Force pushed the data pad back into her grasp. "And you wouldn't want me to tell him that you're disobeying your teachers, would you?"

Leia's mouth dropped open in a silent "oh" of juvenile outrage, eyes wide. She closed her mouth, then opened it again, repeating the motion a few times before finally finding her voice in an angry squeak. "No! That's... that's..." her expression twisted, frown furious as she struggled for the word she wanted. "Cor... cor... corosion!" she managed at last, the word spat triumphantly out as she glared across the table at Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan, to his own credit, managed not to laugh out loud in surprise. "Coercion," he corrected gently, smiling ruefully. "You heard that from your mother, didn't you?"

Leia nodded emphatically, braid bouncing once more. "Bad!" she stated firmly.

Obi-Wan didn't bother to correct her. "If you finish those lessons before creche curfew," he told her, "there's some Alderran sweet cake we could share. But only if you finish." He pushed his own chair away from the table and stood, reaching down to soothe the stray strands of her hair as he scooped up his reports. "There. That's known as 'bribery' - I'm sure you've heard your mother use that word as well. I'm going to sit on the couch. Come and get me if you have any questions."

Expression still set in firm lines of stubborn rebellion, Leia glared after him as he walked across the room to settle himself on the more comfortable couch, reports spread beside him. The promise of sweet cake turned out to be more than her young resolve could withstand, however, and Obi-Wan surreptitiously watched as she finally, reluctantly, picked up the data pad and turned it on.

Despite the creche tutors' concern about a disturbing tendency to persist in using nothing but the bare minimum of infant speech, Leia had a superbly sharp mind that could pick new lessons up quite quickly. Her supposed speech troubles were voluntary habit rather than lack of vocabulary, as evidenced by occasional surprises such as 'coercion'; habit which Obi-Wan felt certain was simply a hold over from having a Force linked twin with whom verbal speech was largely unnecessary. Another such symptom was her tendency to hold broken, half sided conversations with thin air; Obi-Wan listened, quietly amused, as she proceeded to have an animated one syllable argument with herself about the lesson as she worked her way through it.

"Bad... won't... *bribe*... yes... five plus... no, silly... one, two, three, four... look..."

"Do you need any help?" he asked quietly.

"No," she answered, distracted, frowning as she slowly worked out the answers. "Wrong... yes... eight..."

Smiling to himself, Obi-Wan switched his own data pad back on and began working once more.

He was deep in the depths of a Senate transcript when Leia finally wriggled down from the makeshift stack of cushions that had boosted her up to the level of the table, dropping with a solid thump of small feet to the floor and trotting over to the couch with data pad in hand. "Done," she proclaimed, colliding with Obi-Wan's knees as she pushed her pad on top of his own.

"I can see that," Obi-Wan replied. He set his own pad aside to look at hers instead, scrolling quickly through the lesson. "That's very well done, Leia."

Satisfied, she let him put the pad down on the couch, leaning heavily into his knees and half across his lap in squirming, childish persistence. "Cake?"

"Yes, I did say something about an Aldaaran sweet cake, didn't I?" Obi-Wan said, amused. "But you've going to have to let me up."

Leia quickly slid off of his knees, scrambling hopefully for the food prep area. Obi-Wan followed her more sedately, putting a quietly reproving hand on the top of her eagerly bouncing head as he slipped past her. "I think I left it... yes, here it is." An opened cabinet produced the treat in question, the small loaf neatly wrapped and stored. Obi-Wan started to reach for it, then paused, glancing down at Leia who had her chin resting on the counter top below. "Do you think you can get it down?"

It was an outrageous thing to ask of a creche aged child but Leia, looking up at the cake, nodded confidently. Obi-Wan took a step back and watched carefully as the girl, her face twisted in serious concentration, eyes narrowed, stared up at the object of her attention.

It didn't have any refinement or training to it, raw and childishly elemental, but the Force spiked sharply in a burst of brilliance that Obi-Wan could feel like a rush of heat all around him as it surged at her direction. Over her head the cake shuddered, lifting tremblingly up off of the shelf to drunkenly lurch through the air in an awkwardly controlled plummet towards the counter. Obi-Wan reached over her, catching it before it could slip and setting it down before he clasped her shoulders, squeezing gently. "That was *very* well done, Leia, very good."

She beamed up at him, the expression transforming her pixieish, pale face into a picture of simple childish glee at the praise. Her shoulders were shaking slightly, small fingers clenched white knuckled on the counter, and Obi-Wan hastily cut a large piece of the cake and gave it to her, along with a plastic cup of water. Leia, both hands full and all but inhaling the cake in a cascade of small crumbs down the front of her tunic, trotted back to the couch.

Obi-Wan followed with the rest of the cake but only ate a few slow bites himself, holding the remainder of the loaf to give to Leia as soon as she had finished her first piece. It was only fair after having asked her to get it down from the shelf, he reflected wryly, and what the creche tutors didn't know wouldn't hurt them. Leia gleefully polished off her piece in record time, licking her fingers clean, and then started at a slower pace on Obi-Wan's piece, rhythmically chewing and swallowing in perfect contented bliss.

She giggled once in mid-bite, coughing slightly as she tried to laugh and swallow simultaneously. "What's funny?" Obi-Wan asked indulgently.

"Luke," Leia replied promptly, giggling again. "Mama's silly!"

Years of practice before troops, Padawan, Senate and Council let no trace of surprise cross Obi-Wan's expression. She might, he thought, have just remembered something funny from Amidala's recent visit and, assuming that everyone could know her thoughts the way her brother could, simply wasn't elaborating. That was certainly the more likely scenario rather than...

Leia cut across his thoughts with a shriek of laughter and Obi-Wan had to hastily rescue her cup of water before it ended up all over the reports between them as the girl squirmed amidst the cushions. "Tickles!" she accused between giggles, yelping. "Mamaaaa...." And then, just as abruptly as it had started, it stopped. Leia squirmed back into a more comfortable position, frowning in childish irritation as she went back to her cake. "Silly Mama," she said firmly around a mouthful.

Obi-Wan handed her cup back to her, the motion carried through automatically as his mind raced to catch up. Surely... Amidala's transport had left Coruscant days earlier and he knew, even without glancing at the chrono and calculating distance versus hyperspace time, that the Queen and Leia's brother were already back in the Naboo system, or very close to it. Half a galaxy away, and surely... surely no Force sense, even that between twin born, could reach so far. "Leia?" he asked carefully, trying to choose simple words for the girl. "What was your mother doing?"

"Tickling," Leia replied, unconcerned, as she licked crumbs from her fingers.

"Just *now*?" Obi-Wan inquired, trying to clarify the point he needed answered. Thinking back, he tried to remember the details of the creche reports. Leia's file had a number of oddities mentioned in it, but a great number of them had been written off to settling in at the Temple and her late entry, as well as her previous life as princess elect. She had passed every standard Temple test given her with ease but now Obi-Wan wondered if the fault might not lie with her tutors, for not thinking to ask nearly *enough*. "Leia, is this something that happened earlier, when your mother was here, or something that's happening *now*?"

"Not now," Leia answered, but before Obi-Wan could draw a breath of relief she shrugged, cocking her head slightly as though to listen to something he couldn't hear. "No play now. Mama busy."

Training the father, Obi-Wan reflected wearily, hadn't prepared him in the slightest for trying to train the daughter. Anakin, by comparison, had been a very straight forward student. "Leia..."

But Leia wasn't listening. Head cocked, eyes closed, she was frowning as she listened to something so very far away that Obi-Wan, no matter how he stretched every scrap of Force talent he possessed, couldn't hope to hear. "...Mama?"

"Leia?" Now truly worried, Obi-Wan leaned forward, hesitating to touch the girl and jar her out of whatever half trance she was in. "Leia, listen to me. Hear my voice. Come back. You're going to have to come back now."

"Mama?" It was a small sound, tiny and forlorn, half hiccuped. "Ma...?"

Obi-Wan had just steeled himself, fingertips brushing her shoulder, when Leia screamed.

The sound burst from her in a high, rising wail, open mouthed and terrible. Obi-Wan, startled, could only stare for a handful of heartbeats as Leia shrieked, the scream spiraling up without break for breath, her small face flushing pink and then red, darkening dramatically. By the time a badly shaken Obi-Wan could grab her, plucking the small girl bodily off of the couch and into his arms, Leia's face was a deep, congested red and the scream starting to choke as she struggled against his grasp, hands and feet flailing.

"Leia! Leia, it's Obi-Wan... Leia..." The girl paused just long enough to draw another breath, gasping, and then the scream began again, wordless and piercing.

Obi-Wan, feeling the panic rising in his own rapidly pounding heart, thrust the feel and immediacy into a single wordless shout that echoed the whole Temple over, rippling like a cresting wave through the Force. //ANAKIN!!//

Leia's elbow impacted across Obi-Wan's chin, flung with all the strength in her small body as she twisted and struggled in his arms like a wild thing. Obi-Wan hugged her closer, tucking her body against his own chest as he felt the Force around them flare, tiny crackles of electric sparks popping and snapping in the air as Leia's struggles increased, her scream unabated. Obi-Wan was gathering another summoning shout, heedless of what chaos it would provoke through the evening dimmed corridors of the Temple, when the door to his quarters slid back and a tall body stumbled through, skidding forward to almost fall at Obi-Wan's feet in breathless urgency. "Here... give her here..."

Leia only drew breath for a renewed shriek as Obi-Wan thrust her into Anakin's outstretched arms, her small fists pounding against her father's chest. Anakin slid to the floor, cradling Leia tight, his face buried in the disarrayed tangle of her hair, and Obi-Wan caught a glimpse of Han's pale, wide eyed face framed in the doorway as the boy hovered, agitated and out of breath, behind his Master.

"He... in the corridor... outside the training halls..." the words tumbled off of Han's lips, frightened and stumbling. "Don't know... Master?"

Leia, safe in her father's arms, gasping and choking, finally forced syllables through the scream, raw and terrible in her child's throat. "Maaaaaaaa! Maaaaaaaaaa! Maaaaaa!"

Anakin, his own voice hoarse, the Force around him crackling in ragged, painful sparks as he hugged his daughter tight, could only try to soothe her in rough, choked words whispered against her hair. "Shhh.... shhh, baby, shhh..."

Obi-Wan, feeling their combined pain wash over and cut through him like a surgical laser, searing raw through old and new bonds alike, had to struggle to draw breath. "Anakin...?"

The younger man's face, when he raised it to meet his Master's gaze, was blank and terrible in its empty shock. "Dala," he whispered, the sound falling numb from his lips. "I felt... I..."

But he couldn't finish. It was little Leia who gave the impossible voice, sobbing in the breathless wailing gasps of a lost child. "Mamaaaa! Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuke!"

[...to next stage]


End file.
